1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to deburring and finishing apparatus for machined metal parts and, more particularly, to apparatus for finishing automobile wheels.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Stylized chrome wheels have become quite popular with many automobile owners, and in particular with luxury and sports cars. This is due to the fact that chrome wheels serve to substantially enhance the overall appearance of an automobile. Most automobile owners feels that chrome wheels give an automobile a more stylish, sporty and expensive look.
However, order to provide such an aesthetically pleasing appearance, the front or visual face of a machine wheel must made be as smooth as possible before the front face is coated with a layer of chrome. If the front face is not smooth, the chrome layer applied thereto acts to enhance and visually magnify any grooves or imperfections remaining in the wheel surface, thereby significantly detracting from the overall appearance of the wheel. Thus, there is a need for a device which may quickly and efficiently remove substantially all the grooves and roughness on the front face of the wheel to provide a front face with the desired degree of smoothness.
One prior method employed for finishing automobile wheels to polish the front face thereof was to manually finish such wheels by hand. A workman would manually rub an abrasive material against the front face of the wheel which would eventually serve to polish the front face of the wheel. This procedure proved to be quite tedious, time consuming and thus very inefficient.
A mechanical device previously used in the industry to finish automobile wheels is a vibrating finishing machine. Such machines are typically formed with an upwardly opening trough into which is placed an unfinished machined wheel. The wheel is then surrounded with plastic or ceramic media. The machine is then actuated to vibrate the wheel and media such that the continuous agitation of the wheel and media causes the media to contact and rub against the front face of the wheel to eventually finish the wheel. Such a device is not free from shortcomings, however. The process of finishing a wheel in such an apparatus may take up to several hours thus utilizing a substantial amount of machine time. In addition, such an apparatus is quite noisy to operate, which may create a nuisance to any adjacent businesses or residences in addition to transmitting a large amount of noise throughout the building in which it is operated.
Automobile wheels finished by the above-described methods, due to the significant amount of man or machine time involved, are necessarily quite expensive. The finishing costs incurred to prepare the wheel for the chrome plating process significantly raises the costs of the finished wheel. Thus, for many consumers, purchasing stylized chrome wheels is out of the question due to the high cost of such wheels.
It has been proposed to rotate machined parts including machined wheels on a spindle in water containing abrasive media in effort to finish the front face of the wheels. However, such a procedure has proved to be ineffective in finishing automobile wheels, and has only been found to be effective as a deburrer for deburring the outer edges of certain machined parts, such as gears and the like.
As such, there continues to be a need for a wheel finishing apparatus which is efficient to use and effectively finishes an automobile wheel without requiring a substantial amount of man or machine time, thereby reducing the end cost to consumers. The present invention addresses such needs.